The invention relates to a damping device for furniture door leaves with a damper accommodating damper housing having a base plate whose base area rests against and is fastened to an effective bearing area of the door opening of the furniture door leaf, with a front retaining projection that is angled off the base area overlapping the face edge of the effective bearing area.
Different embodiments of damping devices for furniture door leaves are known. At the end of the closing motion, the furniture door leaf makes contact with the damping device, either with the piston rod of the damper fixed inside the damper housing or with the cylinder housing of the damper that is guided for movement inside the damper housing and whose piston rod supports itself on the damper housing. The furniture door leaf that makes contact with the damping device is slowed down until it is completely closed so that there is no undesirable sudden. forceful contact of the furniture door leaf with the body of the piece of furniture.
A known damping device (EP 1 469 153 B1) is arranged in one corner of a body of a piece of furniture. A front flange of the damper housing forms a retaining projection that is angled off the base area of the damper housing with the retaining projection overlapping the two face edges of the effective bearing areas that meet in the corner of the body of the piece of furniture. This is where the damper housing is fastened to the body of the piece of furniture in a manner that is not described in detail.
Since the forces that act on the damping device can be relatively strong, and since limiting the arrangement of the damping device to the corner of the body of the piece of furniture substantially limits the number of possible uses and in particular the number of possible adjustments, it is desirable to provide a damping device as the type described in the introduction that can easily be fastened to any location on the edge of the door opening of the body of a piece of furniture so that even relatively strong forces can be absorbed.
In an aspect of the present invention, the base plate has a screw bore through which a fastening screw can be screwed into the effective bearing area and in that a spring projection protruding from the base area of the base plate can be pushed back behind the base area against spring resistance.
The spring projection that extends from the base area of the base plate when no forces act on it, facilitates the attachment of the damping device to a face frame of the body of a piece of furniture. This results in the inside edge of the face frame being accommodated between the front retaining projection that is fixed to the base plate and the back spring projection. This ensures that the damping device is aligned on the face frame.
A fastening screw is used to screw the base plate to the effective bearing area of the face frame, providing a very strong basis for the damping device.
If the damping device is used in a piece of furniture without a face frame, the base plate rests against the effective bearing area of the body of the piece of furniture with the entire length of its base area. The spring projection initially protruding from the base area is pushed back against spring resistance behind the base area when the base plate is screwed on and thus does not interfere when the base plate is screwed on.
This ensures that the damping device can be used either on face frames or on areas of the bodies of pieces of furniture without face frame without requiring any changes to the design and thus it can be used for two different types of furniture construction. It is not necessary to provide different damping devices or base plates for these two different types of furniture construction.
The spring projection can be angled off the free end of a spring tongue that is connected to the base plate and preferably is integrally formed with it. This embodiment is particularly simple from a manufacturing point of view because the spring tongue can be formed by a substantially U-shaped incision in the base plate and the spring projection is comprised of the angled end of this spring tongue.
According to a different, particularly advantageous embodiment of the invention, the spring projection is arranged on a plastic insert that is attached to the base plate. Here, the desired spring effect is exclusively reached by the material properties of the plastic insert so that the spring effect must not be taken into consideration when selecting the material and the construction type of the base plate. In particular this makes it possible to make the base plate relatively stiff.
It is particularly expedient when the plastic insert comprises a screw sleeve that provides the screw bore with the screw sleeve being connected to the spring projection via a spring arm. Since the screw sleeve is connected to the base plate when it is screwed in, this results in a simple design for fastening the spring projection carrying spring arm on the base plate without requiring any special measures.
It is particularly expedient when the screw sleeve has a bore that is adapted to the screw diameter so that the fastening screw can be pre-mounted in the screw sleeve. This would make it possible to pre-assemble the entire damping device with a captive fastening screw.
The spring projection expediently has two spring arms on the sides that extend toward the retaining projection when they are not deformed. When the damping device is fastened to a face frame, these spring arms on the sides make contact with the back of the face frame and thus cause a tolerance compensation for the width of the face frame across a comparatively large tolerance area.